Chapter 56. Encouraging Suicide
The burning beasts were running around screaming strangely. A summoned beast that resembled a deer jumped around with a stone spike in its stomach. Soon afterwards it dropped dead, spilling its intestines all over the floor in the process.
Was this too much for the saint?
She looked quite depressed, but she wasn't looking away.
Ah, so she's fine.
I suppose it was obvious, given how she's been through worse things before. The one who had suffered from this 'mental attack' was the Summoner. She must feel extremely painful, given how her friends were being completely massacred. She may be a hero who's been through quite a lot of things, but there was no way she'd be fine after seeing all of her friends killed like this.
With this, her summoning magic was pretty much sealed away.
If she tries to summon anything again, I'll throw one of the corpses here at her.
I'll ask her if she'd make 'imaginary friends' again as I do this.
"Do you need a potion?"
Necro, who had been casting magic relentlessly, shook his head. When I checked his status with the Oracle, I found that his mana was still completely full. So he still wasn't going all out.
As expected of the world's strongest…
With a spell that was less than fifty words, he had managed to completely destroy the sky island. It was a wonder the island managed to stay afloat. The plants on the island had all burnt to a crisp and the ground was paved in many places, making it look quite abnormal. I was quite impressed, but instead I just decided to taunt Necro a little to make him outperform himself.
"That's all you got? How underwhelming."
"Hot damn. This much is amazeballs already. Just what did you expect?"
"Nukes?"
"Are you kidding me? What kind of a wizard do you think I am?"
He responded with a tone laced with annoyance. Well anyhow. There were a few creatures left, but they weren't in any condition to do anything.
The only one left was a small girl who had gotten down on her knees.
I told them to keep their distance as I made my way to the Summoner. The girl who had put on a cute eye mask along with a pair of pink pajamas didn't move one bit when I moved near her. The silver string on her wrist snaked up her arm to her shoulders though, like a living being.
– A stringlike armor. It protects the body and stops any bleeding.
Did she unsummon her unicorn? I tried firing a bullet at her head as a test.
Bang! Ping!
I was trying to observe how the damage would be reflected. Before anything though, I felt a shock to my helmet and my head bent backwards.
So she could control direction.
If one considered the angle in which the bullet was fired, it was obvious that the bullet would have hit the floor. It could've even gone right back into the gun even. But not my helmet.
"Go… Go away…"
She seemed to have squeezed the words out of her. The Summoner, head still hidden between her knees, raised her arm. There was a midnight blue bracelet on it.
– A weather controlling weapon created by the rain dragon. It is possible to lock on a target using special gestures.
– The casting time changes depending on the weather conditions. After an average wait time of thirty minutes, a lightning bolt strikes the target 3~12 times.
– The casting time changes depending on the weather conditions. After an average wait time of fifteen minutes, a hurricane can be seen over the horizon.
– …
This must be from the same world as [History of Evil = Murderer]. The bracelet opened up to let out a midnight blue light. The Summoner easily manipulated the hologram cast in front of her.
She was probably planning on using the strongest skill listed on the weapon, the Spear of Lightning. There were thirty minutes left till the spell would actually be cast, so I had quite a bit of time left. I watched as the sky above me became darker and asked the saint to scatter the clouds above us. If there are no clouds, there would no no lightning.
Her methods of attack was completely sealed off, and now it was my turn to attack.
Out of the three plans, the first one I'd try to use would be the 'delay'. As long as the Summoner's power didn't influence time, there had to be a delay in the processing time for the reflection. If that processing time took too long, the ability would become ineffective in battle. Due to this, I hypothesized that instead of putting a reflective field on different parts of the body, the Summoner would have surrounded her body with a thin reflective barrier of the same element.
Reflection was simply the act of changing a + to a -, and a – to a +. If I attack with a force of + and – all at once, one of these two attacks would work.
I put my index finger and middle finger on the Summoner's forehead and the moment I came into contact with her, I pushed in with my middle finger and pulled back with my index finger. The two forces were now opposite to each other. The result of this attack was… quite horrid, to say the least.
"…So it's not this easy, is it."
I pulled back my burnt finger. The timing was right, but the Summoner's power seemed to work a lot more elaborately than I thought.
Alright. Onto the next plan. I asked the saint and Necro to put a smaller version of the barrier they created when we fought the Warrior. What I was planning on doing now was to exploit the area of effect of the Summoner's ability. I took out a can of air from the vault and looked down at the Summoner. To think she didn't even try to run despite having three people try to kill her like this…
This should probably be a result of her fear of society, rather than confidence in her power.
A shut in. That's what she was.
I filled the insides of the barrier with pure oxygen and lit it on fire. In an instant, a huge flash fire roared— burning away all the air within the barrier.
There was no way to create something out of nothing. It didn't matter what she did with her power. If there was no air, she couldn't survive. But as I thought this, I noticed that the Summoner was chewing on something relaxedly.
"What's that?"
"An air bean… Eating it allows you to breath underwater for more than twelve hours, is what Iris says to the villain."
There must've been an underwater stage of sorts when they were fighting the Demon King… I never heard of an item like this. Wasn't written on the report, either. Seeing how she was eyeing the Hirganrel intensely, it seemed that she had realized that the Warrior had died. This allowed me to come up with a new plan. I showed the Summoner the mark of the Grand Thief's Vault on the back of my hand.
"See this? Romeo Smith and Chrono Historia are both dead. If you die here, I could let the Hero live."
"Trash, useless, villain. Big sister isn't going to be killed by a weak mob like you, is what Iris is angrily saying."
Hm. Lies aren't working.
But I am figuring out why the girl is speaking like this. She seemed to be treating herself as a summoned beast. That must be why she was referring to herself in third person as if she was speaking for a different person.
An extreme case of hiding one's true self inside and putting a stand-in in one's place.
"Were you made fun of? Bullied, perhaps?"
The Summoner twitched.
"A girl who rejected everything and ended up reflecting everything away from her. Only beasts are her friends… How perverse. You don't seem to have realized it, but putting your friends in the front lines to fight for you… Are you really their friend? If you're going to fight, do it yourself. Don't put other people's lives at risk for your sake. At this rate, your so-called friends are just fighting dogs."
I threw a knife at her feet.
"Why don't you repent?"
If the Summoner doesn't kill herself here, the saint would have to kill the girl herself. I felt a strange sense of nervousness as I looked at this fifteen year old girl.